Hogarth and the Writers
OSCAR WILDE!. divided books into three classes—books to read, books to re-read and boolr.s not to read at all. In the third class he included " all argumentative books, and all books that try to prove anythieg." While it would be ungenerous to call Mr. Moore's book either geometry or litigation, one must say that he is too fond of " proving " his points. The word clutters up his writing. Hogarth marked a path of popular appeal soon discerned by Fielding, Smollett and only less by Richardson. This is no sensational thesis ; nobody is going to deny it.
Those familiar with Cook's Hogarth Restored and its companion volume of Explanatory Descriptions may find the detailed elucida- tions given by Mr. Moore to the prints, especially those in series, somewhat redundant. But he is evidently aiming at readers to whom access to a copy of Hogarth would be difficult. And it is true that some preface to the prints is essential if one is to trace their effect upon subsequent literature. However, in the chapter rather angrily entitled Hogarth and Fielding Invade the Theatre. Mr. Moore takes a fresher turn, showing that from the time the two men became friends in 1731 they were to pictures and words almost what Gilbert and Sullivan were to words and music. Fielding was an apt pupil in satire. Whilst Hogarth was depicting the theatre satirically, Fielding tried writing plays in the same vein. He wished to lift the London theatre out of the bog of pantomime into which it had sunk since the day of Farquhar, and if the Licensing Act had not deflected his ambition the lamentable dramatic gap between Farquhar and Goldsmith might well have shrunk. Mr. Moore's close treatment of this period with regard to the output of both Fielding and Hogarth is a contribution of value.
When the author comes to what he calls Hogarth's " role " in Fielding's novels he reaches the main burden of his book. He con- tends that Hogarth elevated Fielding from caricature to character, and this he is at great pains to " prove." Yet Fielding himself, in his prefaces, often acknowledges Hogarth (together with Cervantes) as his inspiration. Certainly Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones alike owe a good deal to " A Harlot's Progress " and " A Rake's Progress," something to a " Marriage a la Mode " and " Four Times of the Day," and not a little to single pictures of which examples are " A Midnight Modern Conversation " and " March to Finchley." Mr. Moore quite properly adds that an attentive inspection of such prints helps to clarify certain episodes in Fielding. But Mr. Moore denies that there is any character in English literature after the Jacobeans until Parson Adams. He says that even Restoration drama contains " no real personalities." Let us take at random an example to the contrary. When Bulwer Lytton (whose plays, as Poe rightly said, were better than his novels) called Farquhar the Fielding of the drama, which is as much as to say that Fielding was the Farquhar of the novel, had he found " no real personality " in Farquhar, or did he perceive a substantial kinship between Sir Harry Wildair and Tom Jones ? Mr. Moore writes as if he had seldom seen Resoration comedy acted. Even in reading it he has failed to visualise characters (like Brazen or Foresight) that are universal, that roam every land in every age. Proceeding to Hogarth and Smollett, he finds'that Smollett, unlike Fielding, tended in Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle and Count Fathom not to admit that Hogarth was his source. In Roderick, Smollett inserted a harlot's progress of his own, " The History of Miss Williams," and Mr. Moore thinks this derives from Hogarth. Smollett may equally have noticed Defoe's Roxana. Richardson, it appears, in three or four of his Familiar Letters, made use of scenes from both of
Hogarth's " Progress " series. . . The eleven of the thirteen Hogarth prints to which Mr. -Moore allots only half a page are poorly reproduced, losing much.of the detail. They should have been twice the size, turned sideways.
WILLARD CONI•IELY.
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